Perception of the World Quotes

Everything we see… is just the visible part of reality.

The eye altering, alters all.

The media is in the business of finding exceptions to everyday life. Bad things are still the exception. That's good, because once bad things stop being news, we really are in trouble. If people forget that bad is the exception, they think they live in a horrible world. There is so much that works and is right and friendly and warm. But we take that for granted.

For the world is an ever-elusive and ever-disappointing mirage only from the standpoint of someone standing aside from it—as if it were quite other than himself—and then trying to grasp it. But a third response is possible. Not withdrawal, not stewardship on the hypothesis of a future reward, but the fullest collaboration with the world as a harmonious system of contained conflicts—based on the realization that the only real "I" is the whole endless process.

Beyond positive and negative, what is Reality?

If I, deaf, blind, find life rich and interesting, how much more can you gain by the use of your five senses!

We think we receive all that we perceive, but in fact, we actually give the sky its colour.

Animals see the unobstructed world with their whole eyes. But our eyes, turned back upon themselves, encircle and seek to snare the world, setting traps for freedom.

Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.

I think the lack of critical engagement with the food that we eat demonstrates the extent to which the commodity form has become the primary way in which we perceive the world.

There's certainly a portion of my brain that is always tuned to making wry observations about the world, but that portion of my brain was alive and well before Twitter.

When I work, I'm just translating the world around me in what seems to be straightforward terms. For my readers, this is sometimes a vision that's not familiar. But I'm not trying to manipulate reality. This is just what I see and hear.

People write because it seems like it'll be an easier job than carpet laying, that they might meet more girls. And they write because the world strikes them as being a marvelous place, and they want to keep bringing that to everybody's attention. You know ~ a scary place, a menacing place, an exciting place because it's scary and menacing. But mainly, kind of glorious.

Do try to remember this: even the world's not so black as it is painted" -Valerie to Stephen (pg. 408)

Not only do you become what you think about, but the world also becomes what you think about. Those who think that the world is a dark place are blind to the light that might illuminate their lives. Those who see the light of the world view the dark spots as merely potential light.

The child begins to perceive the world not only through his [or her] eyes but also through his [or her] speech

...primal people see the objects of this world not (or not only) as solid but as open windows to their divine source.

The world he saw was sadder than the one he hoped to find. But it wasn't near as lonesome as the one he left behind.

Great literature, if we read it well, opens us up to the world and makes us more sensitive to it, as if we acquired eyes that could see through things and ears that could hear smaller sounds.

This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Elena had always felt like the center of her own world - who doesn't? The world arranged itself around her like petals around the stem of a flower. This way the meadows, that way the woodland. Over here, the baryn's estate, out there, the hills that hug the known world close and imply a world at beyond. She could never come up with the edge of a world, because it always kept going on beyond. She moved the center of the world as she walked. The world was balanced on her head.

You were the one who taught me," he said. "I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling. I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you.

That's how I am and how I've always looked at the world. I understood what the pavilions were before I came to Venice, and I knew that wasn't going to be enough for me. I wanted to extend this conversation into something I call urgency. There is urgency with people in crisis. Some communities - often the black community - just live in this urgency.

Reality' is a word with many meanings.